


and they all fall down

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: -Ish, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, Drug Use, Gen, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Thoughts about death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-11-05 12:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: Ben dies. Ben comes back. Ben doesn't move on.Ben stays. It's not as selfless as you think.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me: *has a bunch of other wips*  
> also me: *writes another multichapter*  
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> anyway, I binged Umbrella Academy in a day so now we have this. They are all my children and I will literally die for them.

In a single moment, just right before his death, Ben’s body finally feels like his own.

It’s a moment of silence.

It’s a moment of peace. It’s a moment where his body opens up and lets out an entire world, an entire dimension, an entire creature, opens up too wide and too much and it’s too late before he realizes that he opened it too far and there’s no way to stop it and--

It happens in a moment. A moment in a fight Ben didn’t want to be in but The Monocle insisted he be part of. A moment of stupidity. A moment of Luther looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time. A moment of charging into a fight unprepared. A moment was all it took for him to get overwhelmed. A moment for Ben to get surrounded. A moment where Luther caught his eye and nodded and Ben had swallowed down the nausea he was never able to grow out of and raised his shirt and let The Horror out.

A moment to realize that something was wrong. A moment to feel the needle pierce his skin and the sedative to flow through his blood. It works too well even though it wasn’t supposed to. Except it wasn’t a sedative at all. It was something else. Something much, much stronger. A moment to realize the world around him was spinning violently, that the people around Luther weren’t going away, were standing their ground somehow, and a moment is all it takes. A moment that pushes the list of moments on the wrong side of too long.

And then…

And then.

It ends then.

And then he’s eighteen, two weeks away from nineteen, and he realizes he’s not getting past that.

And then a moment of emptiness. Ben falls. Ben crumples. Ben disappears.

In a single moment, Ben is a doll without stuffing, a puppet without strings, a body without innards, a person that’s only a bag for something else that wasn’t there anymore. He is a shell, shattered, falling apart without anything inside it to keep it upright.

A scream. A scream without a sound. Ben screams. Ben is without. Ben is nothing. Ben falls.

He falls.

He falls and.

He falls and it’s the end.

A scream from a voice that wasn’t his, this time much louder. Several screams. Terror. Horror. The Horror has escaped and there’s no escaping it now. Horror. They thought killing Ben would save them but it’ll kill them too.

It doesn’t matter. It’s gonna be okay. Horror dies out eventually. Probably. Usually. Ben was the way out but he was also the way in. It can’t go back now.

Nothing to go back to now. The only thing left is--

He falls. Someone catches him. He knows that person. Luther’s arms are strong around his body and his brother tries to catch him but there’s no stopping it now. And it’s the last thing Ben feels. He hears begging. He hears crying. He hears silence.

He hears the whispers that aren’t from this world and aren’t from the world he held inside him. He hears a call he cannot understand but know as intimately as the flowing of air through his lungs. There’s nothing he can do to stop them. They overwhelm him before he can even try.

He thinks, for the last moment, _that wasn’t so bad,_ and as usual, he doesn’t believe it.

\--

The Horror is something Ben doesn’t talk about. It’s not Allison or Luther or Diego or Five’s powers which are so obvious and easy to understand. It’s not even like Klaus’ powers that seem easy understand but is really a lot more complicated (and terrifying) than most people think.

Ben doesn’t even really _have_ powers. His thing is that there’s a monster living inside him and it really wants to get out and kill everything in sight. Sometimes Ben lets it out to kill everything in sight, sometimes he can even tell it not to touch his siblings and it does what he says, but for the most part, all he does is breathe out and raise his shirt and say, _okay fine, you can go play._

For the rest of it’s just Ben saying no to it. He’s gotten really good at saying no. He learned how to be a stubborn shithead from birth. Lives on the line and all that.

Ben always gets his way because well… His siblings seem to think he’s nice and innocent and Ben takes advantage of it. Besides, nothing can really compare to having to constantly fight a creature the size of a building on who gets to be where.

\--

Death is a black and white garden that looks like it came from a fifties movie.

Death is the moment between being asleep and being awake where everything is a little bit hazy, a little bit muddled, a little bit unreal.

There is a little girl standing in front of Ben, looking up, eyes expectant, hands behind her back. Ben doesn’t want to take guesses on who she is. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do here. This is more of Klaus’ area of expertise. Ben’s expertise is just saying no. But there’s nothing to say no to here. His skin feels too tight, too fitted, nothing moving underneath it, trying to escape.

Empty. He feels empty.

“So,” the girl says, “are you ready to move on?”

“Do I have a choice?” he asks. It doesn’t seem like the thing he should get a say in.

“Everyone does,” she says. “I gave you free will for a reason.”

Huh. From the way Klaus talks about it whenever anyone actually manages to get a straight answer out of the guy, this is definitely not what Ben expected from death. He was raised where the way he dressed himself had rules. He’s not too good on free will, either.

“What’s the catch?”

The girl raises an eyebrow. “You’re going to find that out for yourself, I’m afraid. That’s the whole point.”

“Of course it is,” Ben mutters. “But I can stay, too?”

“Of course,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me, either way. You can come and go whenever you like. You’ve got the rest of time to decide where you want to be.”

Behind her, a beacon of light suddenly shines, casting the girl’s face in shadows. It’s a star. It’s an explosion. It’s fire. It’s something else. It’s calling to him, with a sound that’s a lot like a cry but isn’t. And Ben shouldn’t find it familiar but he does. The girl frowns. She doesn’t turn back to look at it but her shoulders rise with a kind of tension.

The light is an explosion of color, fierce and untameable. And familiar. So familiar. Ben thinks his chest hurts but he doesn’t know if the dead can still hurt.

“Better pick fast,” she says. “There are people waiting on you.”

The light pulses, getting brighter and fiercer with each moment. Not welcoming, exactly. Possessive. Unwilling to let go just yet.

And bright. Brighter than anything here. Full of color where everything else is black and white. Like it’s making everything look at it just by existing.

“Klaus?” Ben asks. “He knows?”

“Not yet. He will soon. He’s sleeping and he’s good at finding things when he’s asleep. Always sneaking in here even when he’s not supposed to yet. I’ve almost kicked him out a lot of times. I don’t like him at all.”

There’s a pull at Ben’s chest. He clenches his fist, pushes past the girl, and walks towards the light.

\--

It’s Klaus who first picks him up from that first mission. He takes a trembling Ben by the arm and leads him to the car. He’s the one who helps Ben sit through The Monocle’s review of their mission, sitting next to him, holding his hand whenever The Monocle isn’t looking, making faces to make Ben laugh whenever he can get away with it.

Ben doesn’t laugh but he appreciates the effort.

Klaus is the one who sneaks into Ben’s room two minutes after they’re sent to clean up and helps him out of his bloodstained clothes and cleans the blood from his face and pulls out a change of clothes from the closet. He’s the one who sits Ben down on the bed and wraps an arm around his shoulder and talks and talks and talks all the way through, like nothing is wrong and Ben’s body isn’t still shifting and morphing because The Horror got a taste of the outside and it wants more.

Klaus isn’t really looking at him through it. He’s looking at something past his shoulder, but that’s okay. Klaus doesn’t really look at anyone when he’s talking to them, always distracted by something else. Ben’s used to it. Besides, Ben’s not sure he can look at Klaus right now, either.

There’s a brittle smile on Klaus’ face but his voice trembles a little as he’s telling the story of that ghost girl he met during the robbery. Tells Ben about the pretty, white dress she was wearing and the ribbon on her dark hair, the doll she clutched in her hand, and how she wanted to play hide-and-seek in the middle of a bank robbery. Apparently that was nothing compared to how the girl died.

“Is she here now?” Ben mumbles because Klaus said that that happens sometimes. Sometimes the ghosts follow him around, especially if they didn’t get to finish the story or there’s something they want.

Vanya had said that that sounded nice once and it was the only time any of them see Klaus genuinely angry, snapping and shouting, looming over her that _she didn’t know anything and that she should just shut up._ Ben still thinks that it sounds nice to always have someone but he never said so to Klaus. The rest of them had learned to never talk to Klaus about his powers.

Klaus falters. “What?” he asks.

“The girl,” Ben says. “Is she here? You said sometimes they follow you around, right?”

“No,” Klaus says. “No she’s not here.”

His face is the color of milk, staring at a spot above Ben’s head and the smile on his face is almost manic in how forced it is. The Horror under Ben’s skin shifts, murmurs, sensing Ben’s unease, looking for something else to destroy.

Ben pushes it down.

“Klaus,” Ben says. “Klaus look at me.”

Klaus’ eyes flicker towards him for a moment before going back to whatever he’s staring at.

“Klaus,” Ben says. “Did someone follow us here?”

“No.” Klaus’ voice comes out strangled. His grip on Ben’s shoulder tightens protectively. “Why would you think that? Just the two of us here, Benny.”

“Klaus.” It’s a bit weird that it was Klaus who’d followed Ben here to help him out and now it’s Ben who’s forcing him to talk but helping Klaus does help Ben. It makes him forget things a little; forgets that his fingers are still caked with blood, that he’s probably gonna be having nightmares about the screams of those four men for the rest of his life, and the fact that Ben _still_ can’t quite stop trembling.

He can even kinda forget that he’s still having a battle of wills with an eldritch horror inside his body that really, really wants to get out and kill whatever’s scaring Klaus so much.

“Tell me,” Ben says.

Klaus shakes his head. Ben isn’t surprised. Klaus doesn’t really talk about the dead. He sometimes talked to them when they were younger but not really anymore. Most of the time, Klaus likes to pretend he doesn’t have powers at all.

He can’t help staring at them, though, can’t help flinching away at random times, hissing, reacting. He’s gotten better about hiding it now. The others don’t notice or they’re pretending not to. Ben does. Ben notices. He never hid it.

“It’s them isn’t it?” Ben guesses. “Those guys I killed.”

Klaus flinches. “It’s just the two of us here,” he repeats.

“Tell them I’m sorry,” Ben says. “I didn’t--” Didn’t want to do it? Didn’t mean to? Didn’t do it? That probably won’t mean much to the people he killed. They’re angry and they followed Ben and taking it out on Klaus who is still somehow trying to comfort him when his life would be so much easier if he wasn’t around someone who’s covered in so much blood.

“Tell them I’m sorry,” he settles on and it’s nowhere near enough. “I’m so sorry.” And Klaus hisses angrily and for a moment, Ben thinks it’s for him but no. Klaus is still looking at the wall. Still seeing something only he can.

Ben falters for just a moment and a tentacle sneaks out, moving to wrap itself around Klaus, maybe to comfort him, probably to strangle him. He takes it and shoves it back into his stomach. Klaus flinches again, pressing Ben closer to him, staring at the far side of the wall. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.

Ben needs to be not alone right now. Klaus probably needs to be as far away from Ben as possible.

“Stay with me?” Ben whispers because he is, at his heart, a selfish person.

“Wouldn’t do anything differently, brother mine,” Klaus says and his voice doesn’t even waver.

Ben almost hates himself for the relief that washes over him.

\--

Klaus shines like a beacon to the dead. It’s no wonder they find him so easily.

Ben appears in Klaus’ bedroom at the mansion. His brother is passed out on the bed, the smell of alcohol and weed radiating off of him, a half-used blunt still caught between his fingers. He was supposed to go on the mission with them but he’d gotten roaringly and fabulously drunk the night before (his words). The Monocle had taken one look at him, still drunk out of his mind, called him a disappointment, and forbidden him from going on the mission.

He’d winked at Ben on the way out, a dazed grin on his face, already sipping out of a flask, and Ben couldn’t help but smile back.

Now, Ben is back and he can see the light surrounding Klaus. He can see Klaus the way the dead can see and his brother looks downright angelic surrounded by a halo of light. The ghosts are crowding him, whispering things, filling every crevice of the room and then some. But right now, everything is a bit muddled, a little bit unreal, like there’s a veil or a wall of broken glass or a body of water separating them. Their voices are quiet enough to be white noise. But still, Klaus is twitching in his sleep, agitated.

“Klaus,” Ben says. “Klaus wake up.”

Another twitch.

The ghosts shift, murmurs getting agitated for a second before returning to their regular volume. Ben wonders if Klaus can even hear him? He’s having trouble hearing himself. Everything feels too foggy, feels too much like drowning.

It’s Klaus. Klaus who’s drowning him. Klaus who called him here, calls everyone here without even knowing and drowning them out with anything he can find because he can’t bear to listen to what they have to say.

“Wake up Klaus,” Ben says, louder this time.

Klaus stirs but doesn’t open his eyes.

“G’way Ben,” he mumbles. “Too early for this.”

“ _Klaus_ ,” Ben says a third time, putting as much force as he can behind the words. Klaus bolts upright on his bed nearly dropping the joint. He turns to Ben, eyes wide, face deathly pale and losing more color with each second.

It occurs to Ben that turning up in his bedroom as a ghost might have been a bad way to tell your brother you’re dead.

“No no no no no--Shit, no you’re not--” Klaus looks away from him almost immediately, staring at the joint in his hand, breath coming out in quick, short gasps. “I’m hallucinating. That’s it. I just took too many and--”

“Klaus.” Ben reaches forward. He’s supposed to take Klaus’ hand, the way they did when they were kids and Klaus or Ben would have panic attacks, except.

Except his hand goes right through in a flash of blue light. Ben pulls away immediately.

Klaus flinches back, hitting his head on the wall. He doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are shining bright. His entire body is trembling, shaking so hard he looks like he’s going to shatter himself. The light around him flares, shining out, calling out louder. Ben wants to tell Klaus to calm down, that he’s making things harder for himself, but that’s probably the last thing Klaus wants to hear right now. The ghosts around them are getting more agitated, whispers getting louder until they almost sound like screaming.

Klaus is calling out harder and he doesn’t even know it. Ben wants to hold him, stop the way his shoulders are shaking, and fix things.

Klaus squeezes his eyes shut, putting his hands over his ears, and curling his knees towards his chest. He’s shaking his head muttering, “go away go away go away. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real,” over and over again like it will make it true.

Ben kneels at the side of his bed. There’s an odd calm that comes with being dead or maybe that’s just him. The dead around Klaus don’t look like they’re calm at all. Maybe it’s just that his brother looks like he’s about to have a full-blown nervous breakdown and someone needs to be the voice of reason around here.

Even if he is the cause of said nervous breakdown.

“Klaus,” he says. “It’s me. It’s real,” and he almost says, “I’m sorry,” but he doesn’t want to apologize for dying.

Klaus finally opens his eyes. His hands fall to his sides. He stares at Ben, eyes searching. Ben has no idea what he looks like. He remembers ripping himself to pieces, remembers falling, remembers dying.

Klaus looks at him. Ben tries to smile. Fails.

Klaus screams.

\--

Apparently, Ben looked like shit when he died. There wasn’t really much of him to take home at all. Certainly not enough to have a proper funeral.

The Monocle puts up a statue and Ben bursts out laughing at the sight of it. It’s bronze plated and about five years too young with a stupid expression on his face. Klaus laughs alongside him and everyone looks at him like he’s gone crazy.

Probably has, though not for this part. Talking to thin air doesn’t really help.

Luther stepped forward, fists clenched and it’s only Allison who stops him, though she glares at Klaus too. Diego looks pissed but he always looks pissed. And even Vanya looks mad. Ben wants to tell them it’s okay because if anyone should get a say on what to think about his statue, Ben thinks it should be him. He waits for Klaus to tell them except.

Klaus doesn’t. He holds up his hands, seeming not to notice the dirty looks everyone’s giving him, and doesn’t say anything.

“Why didn’t you tell them?” Ben asks when they’re back in Klaus’ room and Klaus is drinking straight out from one of the liquor bottles he filched from their father’s collection.

“No way,” he says. “No way in hell I’m reminding the old man I have powers. No thank you.”

Some ghosts behind Klaus shift. Dark, terrifying things who whisper Klaus’ name over and over again, reaching out towards him. Klaus’ head twitches and he takes a long drink out of the bottle.

“And what if I want you to tell them?” Ben says.

Klaus looks skeptical. “Do you?”

“Fuck no,” Ben says. He can handle Klaus because Klaus is used to dead people following him around. He hates it but he’s not the type to burst into tearful apologies just because the person he’s talking to is dead. His siblings are assholes and he was an asshole to them. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do if they started being nice.

Ben stays with Klaus that night, even when he starts snorting up coke at around midnight because he doesn’t have anywhere else to be. That black and white heaven is definitely not for him.

Klaus looks back at him at around two a.m. and groans. “How are you still here?”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to leave?”

“You’re not really here, so kinda, yeah,” Klaus says. “Move on or whatever it is you dead people do.”

Ben looks pointedly around the room. The ghosts around them are practically invisible but also still very clearly there.

“Why the hell would you even want to stay?” Klaus demands.

“Your my brother, dipshit,” Ben snaps. “Maybe I just want to stay with you.”

Klaus grins at him. “Now that’s just not true _at all._ ”

Ben presses his lips together, looking away. Klaus is drunk and high and who knows what else. What does he know?

What does he know of that empty place, where everything is without color and just a little bit fuzzy? He doesn’t know of that world that wasn’t real, that couldn’t be real, with that girl with a beautiful smile and cold eyes.

Ben was eighteen, going on nineteen, when was emptied of everything he was, and he doesn’t know how to exist in a body that’s just his.

He doesn’t move on. He can’t move on.

Ben doesn’t answer. Ben stays.

He stays. He stays and stays and stays, though he knows he probably shouldn’t. Klaus is falling faster and further with him there and he’s not sure if it’s not his fault. Klaus went on a two week long binge of bad decisions trying to get rid of Ben. The ghosts get further and further, quieter and quieter, until they all seem just like smoke, probably blending in as easily with whatever else Klaus took.

It’s a month after Ben’s death that Klaus leaves the mansion. It’s a week later that he’s sitting beside a dumpster, high out of his mind, and ready to inject more heroin into his blood.

“You have to stop this,” Ben hisses. “You’re gonna kill yourself.”

Klaus swats at him, not looking at him. He’s not looking at anything else. He’s giggling at something he’s seeing that those goddamn drugs gave him.

“I know,” he says, still giggling. “That’s kind of the point, mon frere.”

“Klaus,” Ben hisses.

“Mistress Death has been calling to me all her life,” he slurs. Somehow, his hands are steady on the needle. “Why not answer, am I right?”

Ben wants to scream. He wants to take Klaus by the shoulder and shake him, yell at him to stop being so stupid. He wants to hate Klaus, wants to be stuck with someone who’s less of a disaster. He wants to be not dead and not be the one dragging Klaus further and further down this spiral.

“Don’t you dare,” Ben says. His voice is cold, almost toneless and he hates that too. The dead don’t cry. They don’t really feel anymore. The dead tell their tales. They play at everything else. “Don’t you dare leave me. You’re the only one I have left, asshole. You’re the only reason I can stay.”

He’d be lost without Klaus, without that shining light Klaus radiates no matter how hard he tries to suppress it. He’d be just like those other ghosts following him around, dead and rotting and mad. Ben’s not letting go. Not yet.

Klaus looks up at him. His eyes are still hazy, the smile is still vacant, but there’s something there, something almost alive. It’s the most sober look he’s given Ben in a long, long time.

“You’re really better off without me, Benny. Wouldn’t want you to see this. It’s probably gonna get bad. Don’t worry. I’ll be joining you soon. We’ll be spending a lot more quality bro time together.”

Ben closes his eyes. He leaves.

Ben returns to the garden. The girl is still there.

He says, “why are you doing this to him?”

And she just looks confused. “I made him. I didn’t make him do anything.”

“You made him to hurt.”

“Some just hurt more than others. That’s just the way it works.” She shrugs like it’s simple, like it wasn’t his brother falling and falling and falling and almost welcoming the ground that’s coming to kill him. finding more and more ways to fall faster and leave Ben behind.

“I can’t keep watching him do this to himself,” Ben says.

The girl looks bored. “No one’s forcing you to stay,” she says.

Ben looks away. Ben goes back to Klaus.

There’s a broken syringe at his feet and tears on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus whispers. “I’m sorry. Don’t leave again.”

Ben doesn’t say anything.

Klaus checks himself into rehab with whatever’s left of his inheritance. It doesn’t work, and neither of them believed it will. Ben still appreciates the effort.

He stays. Klaus never makes him leave again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm still alive. Hooray, right?
> 
> Also this is 3 chapters now, lmao.

Death is a memory. Being dead is being stuck in a memory, always being remembered, always remembering and not being anything else. Being dead is  _ being  _ a memory.

It’s being stuck, reliving that one last moment over and over again until it’s the only thing you are. For Ben, it’s that moment of emptiness, of almost freedom, of something like bliss. It’s that moment before he fell, when he felt like he was floating, when he felt that he could finally  _ breathe.  _ Sometimes he loses himself in that feeling, lets himself float just right about everything, feet not on the ground, watching but never quite there anymore.

The feeling happens more and more often and he’s drifting further and further each time, losing more and more parts of Ben-who-was-alive with each moment. Klaus is the only thing keeping him tethered, holding on so tight that Ben can still hear the echo of the person he used to be. He repeats everything Klaus still remembers of him. He thinks he mostly succeeds at it from the way Klaus is always so at ease with him, but he still feels like a bad actor most of the time. Reciting lines so tonelessly and distantly he might as well have not said them at all. Klaus never seems to mind. He acts as if his brother is right there and Ben does his best to be the brother Klaus remembers.

Death is an eternal listening. Ben hears the stories of the dead. He hears the stories Klaus refuses to.

There’s the little girl from the bank from the first mission who’s apparently taken to following Klaus around everywhere, in the pretty white dress with a bow on her dark hair, just like Klaus said. What Klaus didn’t say is that the entire front of her dress is stained red and that her chest is collapsed from a cannonball that’s still cradled between her ribs.

Hide and seek, Klaus had said. Her mother told her to hide behind the bushes in a game of hide and seek, keep her head down, keep quiet, don’t be found while the echo of bullets and soldiers and cannons sailed through the air.

Hide and seek, she kept muttering to herself, hand over her head, just a game of hide and seek. Just hide and seek. Hide and seek that she could win.

Then there’s a woman who just screams for her daughter, half her face burnt off. A man with his head lolling off his neck, blood dribbling down his eyes every time he tries to speak. Another one sickly pale, swaying with each gust of wind, reaching out, mouth permanently open in a soundless cry.

And then are the ones who are just screaming, clawing at anything they could find. They’re dead and rotting, without even the smallest memory of the person they used to be. Phantoms. Mindless creatures. They might have been people once but now they’ve lost the chance of becoming anything other than monsters. It’s been too long. They’ve forgotten how to get to that other place.

Sometimes, Ben wonders how long it’ll take for that to happen to him. He wonders if his brothers light is enough to keep the emptiness at bay. It’s a sick kind of cruelty if he makes Klaus watch his brother slowly turn into the thing that scared him the most. Ben doesn’t think he’s too far gone to be cruel to his own brother. He thinks that means he should leave and save Klaus that kind of heartbreak. It would be better if Ben left now. It would devastate Klaus, undoubtedly, and he may not even survive it, but it would be better. It would be so much better for him if Ben left now.

But Ben stays. He stays because sometimes he wonders if Klaus would even live long enough to see Ben finally lose the last of Ben-who-was-alive. His brother was born dancing with death, half a foot already on the other side, standing on the precipice of the grave. It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long in life. Not with the way he understands death. Klaus is always hurtling towards it, destroying himself is the only way he can get away.

It’s a cruel thought. Death has made Ben cruel. Or maybe Ben has always been cruel and death is the revelation.

“Don’t leave me,” Klaus always says on his worst moments so Ben doesn’t. 

He stays more than a decade and Klaus doesn’t ask him to leave. He tells himself it will be enough and it is.

For now.

\--

When Ben was young and stupid and still alive, he remembers endless nights fighting back tears, clutching his stomach, begging, pleading, to close his eyes and feel the sweet nothingness of death.

Ben wants to smack the him that was alive on the head. The him who was too wrapped up in his own pain that he never bothered to savor the simple ability to  _ feel  _ things.

Ben can’t feel anything now. He feels more smoke than person most days. He’s probably closer to smoke than person these days. He’d give anything, go through his death over and over again just for another moment of feeling, just for another moment, even if it’s pain, even if it’s to just feel those creatures twisting and churning inside him over and over again, banging against his body because Ben was nothing more than a locked door for them.

He’d give anything for that. For just one more sliver of life.

\--

When Ben can’t bear to see Klaus destroy himself at every turn, he goes to see the sea, tries to imagine water lapping at the soles of his feet, waves pulling him towards the endless horizon, pulling and pulling and pulling.

Taking him away.

Sometimes he watches his other siblings fall apart in their own ways. Watches Vanya sink into her grief more and more, watches Luther, Allison, and Diego put up their own delusions of their lives. Ben might have been like them, if he had lived. But he died so things went differently.

Death has made Ben cruel. Death has made him unsympathetic. Death has made him distant and unkind.

When the feeling gets too much, Ben returns to Klaus. Ben returns to his memories.

He doesn’t feel like himself because there’s no longer feeling like himself anymore. But he feels the memory of who he was cradling who he, telling him what to do and who to be, and maybe that’s enough.

\--

When Klaus dreams, he dreams of ghosts. The first time he takes Ben with him, it’s five months after Klaus left the mansion. He’d run out of money for drugs and it was the only reason he managed to stay sober for more than a few hours.

Klaus is back to shivering in a back alley, hands over his ears, eyes squeezed shut, as ghosts closed in on him. They all know his name and the veil between them is thinning, everything getting clearer, sharper, more real. The world almost looks real enough to touch.

Ben wonders if he’ll actually be able to touch it, if Klaus can give him that, if he gets sober enough. The thought is strangely appealing.

“You could try again,” Ben says quietly. “You could try to control it.”

“Ben you’re my favorite dead brother but I really need you to shut the fuck up right now,” Klaus says through gritted teeth.

“Klaus.”

“I said  _ shut up. _ ”

Everything falls silent. The thrum of traffic seems deafening in comparison.

Klaus opens his mouth, lowering trembling hands.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Ben says and that seems to calm him down somewhat, though that’s not saying much, not when his breathing is still coming out in short gasps and his entire body has broken out in cold sweat. The ghosts don’t go away but they stay quiet for a while. It’s probably worse. They just surround him, eerily still, staring at Klaus with blank eyes and rotting faces.

Klaus manages to tire himself out eventually, passing out in the back alley, head lolling against the brick wall. Ben used to wonder how his brother managed to sleep anywhere but it makes more sense now. He’d be constantly exhausted too if he dealt with this many ghosts all the time.

That plus the drinking and it’s a miracle Klaus even manages to wake up at all.

Klaus dreams. Ben watches over him. He checks on the others sometimes but watching them hurts in ways Ben hasn’t had time to get used to yet. Klaus falls apart. Klaus is broken. Klaus destroys himself every chance he gets, more manic and gleeful with each try. But Ben’s spent an entire childhood picking up the pieces. Ben stays with Klaus because Ben’s always stayed with Klaus. It’s as much a part as the farce of a life that Ben’s trying to live as the stolen cups of coffee and extra pancakes. He can’t say the same for the others.

The others are getting worse, cracks that were there at the beginning blooming into full blown fissures. Vanya’s already left, going off to music school without looking back. Allison spends less and less time at home. Diego and Luther argue more than they talk.

Broken. Fractured. Whatever you want to call it. There are lines, scars, open wounds running through their hearts, through the entire family that festers and infects and it’s gonna kill them all in the end like it killed Ben but not before making it hurt as much as it could hurt.

And their father. The Monocle. Their father watches all of this with a raised eyebrow and an unimpressed stare. Ben has never hated anyone more than he’s hated the man.

(He still remembers that time when he was young and stupid and alive. When he was a boy who wanted to make Dad happy.

Who answered to his call of, “Number six! Try again! Better this time!”

With a “yes, sir,” instead of letting The Horror out to murder the old man like it had wanted to and saved them all the heartbreak.)

Klaus dreams. He holds on tightly to Ben’s soul, too terrified to let go and be alone in the dark, dank alleyway. Ben wants to tell him it’s okay, that he’ll never leave Klaus alone, but he doesn’t know how to say it in a way that Klaus will believe him.

He’s already said it so many times.

Klaus dreams. He takes parts of Ben with him.

He takes Ben to the worst parts. To the parts where it’s just pure terror, where everything is dark and the faces of the dead are there, calling Klaus’ name over and over and over again, and the walls are closing in and there’s a door that won’t open and a father that won’t--

_ Help me! _

A father that closes the door over and over and over again.

Klaus screams.

Ben screams.

The world tilts dangerously. The floor is stone and the air is stale and freezing at the same time. The stone pushes against his knees, tombstones digging against his back, and he can almost feel those claw like hands, reaching out, scratching at his skin and and and--

He pushes. Pushes and pushes and pushes everything away, buries the calling deep in his soul because everything is coming closer and closer and he screams and screams until it hurts because hurting is real and everything else is real and--

Everything is real. Everything else is real. The dead are screaming and they’re real.

Ben’s eyes snap open. The light is searing, Klaus is searing, screaming, thrashing and the sun hasn’t risen yet but Klaus shines bright, calling out to every ghost close by, shining like a beacon in their dark, dark world.

“Wake up,” Ben says. “Klaus wake up!”

Klaus doesn’t wake up. He’s whimpering, crying out, tears streaming down his face, body tense and taut but he doesn’t wake up. Ben calls him again. He doesn’t wake up.

“Wake up Klaus,” Ben says. “Come back to me. Klaus come back. Please.”

Klaus’ eyes snap open. 

He sucks in a sharp breath then another then another then another. Like he’s trying to remember what it’s like being with the living.

He rubs a hand over his face, wiping his eyes. He hasn’t stopped crying.

“What the hell was that?” Ben says.

Klaus tries to force a grin on his face. It doesn’t work. There are still tears in his eyes. When he speaks, his voice comes out shaky.

“Just a little dream. You know how it gets.”

“No,” Ben says. “I don’t.” Because Klaus doesn’t dream. He never dreams. He never really sleeps, either. He passes out sometimes but he never sleeps intentionally. And sometimes he takes Ben along to the dark place where the alcohol and drugs took him and it was just nothingness. Not a dream.

And what Ben saw… There was nothing like that like a dream at all. 

It was real.

A memory. A memory that refuses to be buried. A ghost never laid to rest.

“Probably just took a bad batch,” Klaus says. “New dealer and all, can’t really trust them if you think--”

“You’re already going through withdrawal. You’ve been going through withdrawal for the past eight hours.”

“There you go then.”

“Klaus.”

“Ben.”

“I saw a… I saw  _ him, _ ” Ben says. “He was locking you somewhere. There were ghosts all around you.” Screaming, he doesn’t say. Screaming and angry and clawing at Klaus like he was a lifeline. Like he could save them. Like he can pull them back to the land of the living if they screamed at him hard enough.

Like Ben is holding onto Klaus now.

“There are always dead people around me. That’s kind of my thing,” Klaus says. He slumps against the wall. “Just leave it Ben.”

“You were crying,” Ben says. “You sounded like…”

Broken. Like the tinkling of glass as it makes contact with stone floors. Like something in him had snapped and there was no fixing it. Mad, like the ghosts that had screamed so hard. There had been a desperation in Klaus’ eyes that bordered on madness. He was joining the dead calling to him, falling further and further instead of the other way around.

“Leave it,” Klaus says. “Some things are just meant to be forgotten. No use bringing them up.”

_ But you still remember, _ Ben doesn’t say. _ The dead don’t forget. You of all people should know better. You know you will always remember. _ Klaus seems to hear anyway because he looks away.

Ben doesn’t ask again. Klaus gets up to look for a hit and he doesn’t stop him.

Klaus continues to dream. 

Ben figures it out on his own eventually.

\--

Death is a state of seeming. 

Ben plays at seeming alive. He seems to breathe in the pauses between his words. He seems to sit on furniture, move around the room, take up space wherever he goes. He seems to be real; seems alive, seems tangible, seems actually there. 

He’s none of those things.

Klaus is very good at pretending that he is.

It’s around rehab number three and just after overdose number one that Klaus stops flinching away whenever Ben gets too close and starts intentionally setting spaces just for him. He saves Ben a spot at a table, pours him cups of coffee, sets plates of food right in front of him, and glares and hisses and fights anyone who tries to take those things away.

Klaus is also very good at seeming crazy when he wants to. Crazy enough and good enough at fighting that even people in rehab stay the fuck away from him and let him get away with a lot more than they usually would. Ben never mentions it. It helps Klaus through whatever he’s going through.

And it’s hard to say it’s not nice to feel more real than he actually is. For Klaus he’s there. Klaus is forcing him to actually be there through sheer force of will and denial.

Ben hasn’t touched anything in years. He’s never going to touch anything ever again. Klaus still acts like he can.

Ben doesn’t tell him to stop.

\--

He never goes back to that black and white place. He never will. Not until he can help it.

He doesn’t stay for Klaus, though Klaus has become a big part of it.

He doesn’t stay because of anything, really. Just because he can. Just because the world of the living feels more real, more there than the world of the dead.

Ben wants to keep being real.

He holds onto that.

(Sometimes, in his quietest, most desperate moments, he sees himself like those broken things that follow Klaus around and feels a twinge of terror.)

\--

In the ambulance, after overdose who-knows-what-number, and they hear the news, Ben is there. He seems to be there.

He’s the one who sees the old man’s face on the small television and it takes him too long to piece things together. For Ben to piece the old man’s name, to his face, to the words  _ passed away,  _ and connect them like the dots to a picture he never imagined could exist.

The Monocle has always existed a little in eternity for all of them. They never quite grew out of the childish belief that their parents were supposed to be immortal, always there, unchanging, for better or worse.

(Usually worse, in their case. Or always worse.)

It takes a while for it to sink in. Ben doesn’t know how long. Klaus didn’t even notice at first, too busy high fiving the paramedic and shaking off the almost-death he’d taken to seeking lately.

It’s only when Ben says, “Klaus,” and points to the television that Klaus finally takes notice. 

It takes him a while to understand too.

Klaus’ face goes slack. He nearly cries. Whether from relief or grief, it’s hard to tell. There’s no state of seeming that Ben can do to help this. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel, either. He doesn’t know if the Ben-who-was-alive would have known what to feel, either.

“Go home Klaus,” he says. 

Klaus, for once in his life, doesn’t protest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments give me life <3
> 
> come bother me on tumblr at [discowlng](https://discowlng.tumblr.com). It's a fun time, I swear.

**Author's Note:**

> Other characters to be added later on. I'm pretty sure it's staying two chapters but this is me so *shrugs* 
> 
> Comments give me life <3 [Talk to me about the Hargreeves pls](https://discowlng.tumblr.com). I need to share my feels.


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